Posts Tagged ‘free access’
Starbucks adding free Wi-Fi, free access to subscription sites
Starbucks’ coffee drinks have become synonymous with the high costs consumers are cutting back on these days, but at least the Wi-Fi connections in its stores will no longer require a credit card.
Starting July 1, Starbucks will let anyone connect to its WiFi network for free. This fall, the company will add a content network called Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo and other sites, which will include local content you won’t be able to read anywhere else. Both offerings will be free.
“Free Wi-Fi is in my mind just the price of admission — we want to create … new sources of content that you can only get at Starbucks,” chairman and president and CEO Howard Schulz told the Wired Business Conference. “This is a thing that doesn’t exist in any other consumer marketplace in America.”
Starbucks hopes to make money from these initiatives indirectly, by “enhancing the experience” and making the content “so compelling that it drives incremental traffic,” said Schulz…
McDonalds has free Wi-Fi too, of course, as does just about every other coffee place in the country other than Starbucks. Schulz admitted that both of those stratas have been competing with Starbucks on coffee as well as internet service, with McDonalds stealing bargain-oriented customers and boutique independent coffee shops in urban areas grabbing some of its loyal epicures…
The network will include free online access to the Wall Street Journal, with a percentage of subscription revenue generated when coffee drinkers decide they want to access those articles elsewhere, too.
Good for a frugal geek like me. There are two Starbucks coffee shops within the broad pairing of shopping centers where we shop for most everything but groceries. I access AT&T nothing.
My style is to cop one of whatever barista treat catches my eye – and park my butt in the pickup with beverage and iPad at hand – while my wife is off shopping. She will call me on the cellphone when she needs me to roll up and pack the month’s worth of Target/Lowes/PetSmart goodies into Ruff Boy.
Meantime, I surf and suck down caffeine.
Why do Republicans hate Net Neutrality? – UPDATED
Senate Republicans have moved to prevent the FCC’s proposed rules on net neutrality with an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would tie up funding at the agency for new regulatory mandates. Observers said, however, that the move was unlikely to be approved in the Democrat-majority Congress.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), ranking member of Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said in a release:
“We must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations. Where there have been a handful of questionable actions in the past on the part of a few companies, the Commission and the marketplace have responded swiftly,” Hutchison said in the release.
“The case has simply not been made for what amounts to a significant regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace. These new regulatory mandates and restrictions could stifle investment incentives,” she said.
This is one of those old-fashioned Republican deceits. Not the Bush-Cheney-Perry neocon flavor. A little less sophistry.
Perish the thought someone might prefer freedom of choice, freedom of access and communication – over investment incentives!
UPDATE: In today’s modern up-to-date Senate, the 6 senators offering the amendment to an appropriations bill that will prohibit the FCC from developing and implementing new regulations:
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas ), Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).
